An introduction to the Google Books Partner Program

There are two components to the Google Books Partner Program:

The Preview Program is a free marketing program that enables publishers and authors to promote their books online, through Google Books. By submitting your book, you'll make it discoverable to Google users from around the world.

When a reader finds your book on Google Books, they'll see a limited preview of your book, as well as a series of links to purchase your title at major online retailers. You can also add a custom link to the book's listing on your own website.

Additionally, partners in some countries can sell digital editions of their books on Google Play, earning revenue whenever users purchase their eBooks. Books must be made previewable on Google Books in order to be sold on Google Play. Learn more about the process of selling books.

How Google Books works

We scan the full text of your book, to make each word of your title a possible result for a search on Google Books. This means that if the word "guitar" appears in a page of your book, it would appear as a result for a user searching the word [guitar]. However, even though we index all pages of your title, you can control the percentage of your book that a user will be able to browse.

We've also integrated the Google Books index with the index of Google Web Search, so our users from all around the world will be able to discover your books.

Your content is protected

We host all book content on our secure servers. We disable the print, cut, copy, and save functionality on all preview pages displaying book content, in order to protect your material.

Google also protects your content by limiting the number of pages that are shown to users. You can choose to make from 20% to 100% of your book's content browsable. Partners who wish can also choose to make a PDF of their book available to users for download.

If you sell books on Google Play, you can choose to apply DRM (Digital Rights Management) to your eBooks.

You will retain your copyright. Google does not assume any copyright to your material.

Your benefits

Making your books available on Google Books helps them become easier for potential readers to find. People who find the preview useful may go on to purchase the entire book.

On the preview page for your book, we display a set of links to buy the book at the websites of major retailers, as well as to a site of your choice. These links are not paid for by the sites featured, and clicking on a link to purchase your book at an online retailer won't generate any revenue directly.